


Some Dreams Take Longer to Fade

by Filomena



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: (Slightly), (still in welton though), Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Conflict Resolution, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23661694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filomena/pseuds/Filomena
Summary: “Ever thought of living on the moon?” Todd asks Neil one day, when he’s on Neil’s bed. His hands are behind his head, and he looks up at the ugly popcorn ceiling. A whole lotta bumps. Much like the surface of the moon.Neil looks over from his history essay absentmindedly. It’s half a look, only the connecting of both of their eyes to acknowledge that he heard Todd. He rustles his pages, mumbling, “Nah, can’t be a doctor on there.”-Todd lives with abandon. Neil watches his ambition fade, and clings onto it despite the futility of it all.
Relationships: Todd Anderson/Neil Perry
Comments: 2
Kudos: 59





	Some Dreams Take Longer to Fade

**Author's Note:**

> "Their relationship ends up being the weirdest thing - they meet halfway and try to tie up the rest of their loose ends with their knowledge of calculus. Then they get frustrated, because neither of them are meant for shit like math, and then they blow off steam.
> 
> Either through stupid sonnets and sappy acting. Sometimes sex."
> 
> \- a quote I considered putting in the synopsis.

Todd’s nose starts bleeding, out of no cause at all, and he watches red swirl down the sink as he sees himself in the mirror.

A stained button up shirt. And eyes whiter than the robes of God. 

* * *

Their relationship ends up being the weirdest thing - they meet halfway and try to tie up the rest of their loose ends with their knowledge of calculus. Then they get frustrated, because neither of them are meant for shit like math, and then they blow off steam.

Either through stupid sonnets and sappy acting. Sometimes sex.

Todd looks at his ceiling, seeing all the bumps that reflect off light. He thinks and he wonders; what if people lived on those things? What if we were just living on bumps this whole damn time?

And then he takes the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. And continues to stare into the darkness, but this time at nothing in particular.

* * *

Neil’s eyes remind him of darkness. Of bumps, which reflect off the light that frays and splinters into his Tartarus-like pupils. He often tells Todd to stop worrying so much. To just put pen to paper and then pen to lips, and if there’s time, lips to lips. Or other unspecified things. 

Todd’s face ends up doing all things at once, sometimes. It exerts him ever so strenuously. Usually, he goes to sleep dreaming about bumps and splinters. He catches himself thinking about extraterrestrial plains when Neil is preoccupied with the crook of his neck, which he calls “graceful”, or the vast stretches of skin over his ribs.

“It’s a carnivorous thing,” Todd says one day. His cheeks are flushed, oxytocin rushing through his mind’s aqueducts. When he goes down Neil’s prescribed list of pen to paper(the only kind of doctor he’ll allow Neil to be), he opens up.

Neil turns around to look at him. Dark, mussed hair, and contentedness seeping in his skin so much the air pulses with it. “What is?”

Todd just sighs. Fully delves into the feeling of skin to skin. “Nothing. The bumps. I don’t know.”

Neil just laughs, looping himself closer into Todd’s arms. Skin to skin, pulse to pulse, but never page to page.

* * *

There are the odd times where Todd wishes he could walk into a closet shaped bump and disappear. And then there are the odd times where Neil walks into their room, and looks like he’s already packed his bags.

“The secret,” Todd says, walking around the room with his hands flying through the air, “is that you’re not even supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be elsewhere. Because...because you already have a destined place.”

Neil looks like Death materialized in his eyes.

Todd’s losing him, and he can tell, so he stops to look straight into them. Into Death. “Don’t you get it, Neil?” He pleads. “This isn’t the end, because you can live in a world where there isn’t an end.”

Neil looks up, resting his chin in his hand. His eyes are wet, Todd realizes, and he was looking down to hide the glazed over tracks on his cheeks.

Todd sits next to him. “Your dad’s an ass.”

This elicits a small quirk of Neil’s lips, and god, if he doesn’t look like the most tragically sad and beautiful thing on earth. Todd tries again, saying, “Let’s try that pen to paper thing you taught me.”

Neil raises his head, hand still poised as if to support his face. “...Pen to paper?”

Todd looks down. Are they both living on a bump? Or is Neil already gone? “You know,” he continues, “the way you taught me how to get inspiration.” Neil just looks at him, just looks, eyes shuttered off and black like an unused camera lens.

Todd clears his throat. He tries to make his eyes darker, so he can coax Death out of Neil’s eyes and into his own. He deserves it more, after all. 

“For poetry.”

Neil lights up. Death is gone, and back is the mysterious Puck and the blackness of the woods he weaves through.

Todd kisses him as if to allow a pathway for all the pain to flow. For his body to turn into an aqueduct that will make his Rome run free, and clean of all sins.

Later, Todd lets Neil turn his pain into whatever the hell he wants.

* * *

“Ever thought of living on the moon?” Todd asks Neil one day, when he’s on Neil’s bed. His hands are behind his head, and he looks up at the ugly popcorn ceiling. A whole lotta bumps. Much like the surface of the moon.

Neil looks over from his history essay absentmindedly. It’s half a look, only the connecting of both of their eyes to acknowledge that he heard Todd. He rustles his pages, mumbling, “Nah, can’t be a doctor on there.”

Todd turns his head to look at the back of Neil’s. “What do you mean?”

Neil just exhales through his nose. He’s a sentient rock when he concentrates. 

Todd looks over at his abandoned history homework. Maybe he should focus like Neil, work toward something grandiose in the future. Acquire so many bumps that he ends up living on his own little moon. He snorts at the mental image that flashes before his mind - taking care of all the goddamn dust, raking the rocks into their designated places. Getting pissed the next morning, because everything’s become undone, and then starting back at square one. 

“What are you laughing at?” Neil interrupts, finally twisting his whole body on his chair to stare at Todd.

Todd looks at Neil from the very bottom of his eyes, trying to make himself seem nonchalant. Maybe he can shame Neil into getting out of his ridiculous quest of conquering every bump. “Nothing,” He sighs, letting it whoosh through his teeth and into the empty air.

Neil furrows his brow. “Are...are you laughing at me? What did I even say?”

Todd makes the motion of opening his mouth, but only gets to utter the syllables of “I was just thinking of - “ before Neil interrupts him again.

“You know that I’m doing all this shit so I can live a good life, right?”

Todd winces imperceptibly. He can feel the rising indignation in Neil’s voice. “I wouldn’t know about that, Neil,” he says. Todd can be a right bastard around people he’s comfortable with. “We don’t have the same idea of a good life.”

Neil just shakes his head. He’s never been one to blow up. He simply bottles everything up inside him, and lets it rip if the slightest of cracks appears.

Todd, wanting to appease Neil, quickly adds, “Look, I was just thinking about being a doctor on the moon. It’d be a hell of an annoying job.”

Noticing that Neil hasn’t started to write again, Todd continues. “You’d just...you’d just be pissed all the time. Right? ‘Cause you have no one to care for. Only - ” Todd wracks his brain, “only bumps. On a large bump.”

Neil gives a small sigh in response. Then he picks up his pen, and starts to write again.

* * *

Todd bites the inside of his cheek too hard, startling himself awake. Blood blooms across his teeth and glosses over his tongue. In his periphery, he sees hazy light that pushes its way through the drapes, and mentally groans.

 _Excessive consumption of blood can cause vomiting,_ he thinks, neck hanging over the bathroom sink. Too much iron or something.

“Jeez,” Neil remarks from Todd’s side, “you did a number.”

Todd wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nightmare.”

Neil just stares at him. Then he looks away, busying his hands with whatever he usually does. “You’re too rough with yourself.”

Todd eyes him from the side. Since when did he become the harbinger of cryptic messages? “I…” he starts. He doesn’t know what to say. “That’s not true. You don’t know that.”

Neil exhales deeply, but Todd only notices because his lungs deflate like bellows, heavily, in the reflection of the mirror. “You - “ Neil rustles with things in his hands. It seems like he’s bracing himself instead. “You treat your body like an amoeba or something. You’re just a locked in blob, sometimes.”

The taste of blood in Todd’s seems to come back. He notices that it’s because he’s bitten the side of his cheek again, teeth grinding into the hot and quivering flesh.

“Do you wanna know what I had my nightmare about?” Todd asks, after a long pause of staring at the floor tiles. He feels horrifically brazen. 

“What?” Neil asks. He doesn’t even look at him, as if they’re in class talking about bloody Ulysses. 

“I was you.” That seems to do it, because Neil turns to look at him. His eyes narrow as he cleans his face, wiping off soap suds with his towel.

“And I dreamed of wasting my life away, and mowing my goddamn lawn, and telling my wife that I forgot to order the new fridge…” The more Todd talks, the more Neil’s hands still.

“But you know, the kicker, the part that made me shock myself awake, was dying all alone. And - and sad.” The last part was unnecessary, but Todd didn’t care. If Neil could criticize his very existence, so could he. 

Neil just stares at him. Towel dead in his hands, eyes blacker than the bottom of a barrel. Todd shakes and stumbles with nervous energy, trembling all over. He holds his breath when Neil shoves past him, faster and angrier than he’s ever seen him. 

* * *

Todd moves his papers continuously, dropping them everywhere. He sorts his History and English into mounds of sheafs, surrounding himself in piles.

Neil walks into the room and audibly stops. 

Todd almost wants him to say something, but he knows that he won’t. Neil’s as much of a stubborn bastard as his dad, when he really wants to be.

As Neil sits down, Todd catches his finger in his sheaf of English assignments. Blood stains the edge of the paper, and he lets it scurry down the page in spite, writhing its way into his damned History notes.

“You’re gonna get blood all over your notes.” Neil remains hunched over his desk, hiding the fact that he was watching Todd as best as he can.

Todd feels his neck prickle and burn. “Is that all you care about?” He feels his voice rising already. “My fucking notes?”

Neil’s turns around completely, his expression unreadable. “No, I just wanted to -“

“I’m not like you, Neil,” Todd utters, his voice giving way to a damned tremor. The cut on his hand pulses dully in the background. “I...I care about other things.”

Neil laughs incredulously, hatefully, and Todd’s insides churn. _“Other things?_ I don’t want to chase a goddamn _pipe dream,_ so that means I don’t care about other things?” 

Todd doesn’t know what to say, afflicted by the illness of the wordlessness that makes up his existence. “S - sometimes...sometimes you have to try shit out, Neil. I don’t know.” Neil’s eyes narrow slightly when he stutters, and he feels like a bug under a magnifying glass.

Whatever sympathy Neil had withers away. “You’re one to talk, Todd. You’ve never chased anything in your life, have you? At least I’m chasing something, even if - even if I hate it.”

Todd looks down at his hand, which has emptied a decent portion of blood onto his notes. Neil’s pristine notes sit on his desk in a straight pile. “Chasing nothing is better than chasing something you hate, though.” He says this weaker, more dejected, his voice taxed from raising it.

Neil snaps back to his work, his back rigid. But before he turns back, he lets out the cursed words of “God, Todd, you’re a child.”

* * *

It’s late at night. The sky has blackened into residual ash, and embers occasionally flicker through the windows.

Todd lies in silence. He knows Neil is awake; he’s memorized his breathing patterns, and the soft flow of breaths jitters too much when he’s awake. 

The ceiling is a dumb fucking metaphor, Todd figures. It stays the same whenever he looks at it. No matter how many times he warps it into something else, no matter how many faces he turns it into. _You can’t change the fact that your life is one big bump,_ it says, crooning into his ear when he lets his guard down. _You can’t change the fact that Neil lives on his own._

Right then and there, Todd wishes he could blow up the stupid ceiling. He figures some other Welton student has thought the same thing, because hell, it’s Welton. 

Neil sighs. It’s too dark to see Todd’s eyes rove over his body, which remains as still as a corpse.

“Sorry.” Todd’s reply rings out in the silence. He sits and squirms when Neil does nothing.

The sound of sheets. Neil has rolled over to his side, facing Todd’s bed. “You don’t say.”

Todd winces. The skin on the inside of his cheeks twitch. His papercut is a steady thrum in his hand, like an extra heart. “I didn’t mean it.”

He can feel Neil quirk up a dark brow. “I mean,” he corrects, “I did. But.”

“But what?”

Todd’s eyes prick. His fingers stroke his sheets idly, chest sinking like quicksand. “I don’t know.”

Neil laughs. If it was cold, Todd would see the puff of condensing breath amongst the darkness. “You know,” he says, bitterly. Todd can see his soft lips curling up into a simulacrum of a smile. “You have problems too.”

Someone drops an expanding rock in Todd’s throat. He does his best to swallow it.

“It’s not like…” Neil continues. The sheets rustle, and Todd stays deathly still in his. “I don’t know.” Another sigh. “I don’t know what to say.”

The sheets are sticking to Todd’s cheek, but he can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears or both. It shouldn’t be tears. He feels nothing coming out of his eyes, and it’s a warm night anyways. His hands are damp from holding onto fabric for too long.

“Can I sleep beside you?” he asks. He flexes his fingers, straightens them. Ignores the half formed bullshit thoughts in his mind. _Just because you live in your fantasy world,_ he thinks indignantly, _doesn’t mean you can rip me out of mine._ It’s selfish thought, because he has no qualms in ripping Neil out of his reveries like a mandrake. He shatters Neil’s justifications like they’re nothing but sugar glass, and then he shoves the shards down his goddamn throat until they’re bloody and coagulated. 

He knows what he’s doing. And he hates himself for it. 

Neil rolls over, ever patient. Ever perfect, despite all of his obvious flaws. “Sure.” The voice Todd hears is neutral sounding. But he knows Neil, knows that there’s a tremor at the end of the sentence that he can’t hear. 

Brave idiot. Todd shoves his thoughts down and props his body upright. He ambles his way clumsily to the bed, nearly knocking down the glass on the nightstand. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, catching it before it lands on the floor. 

Neil laughs. His face is now visible, troubled and upset and residually mad, but it’s still there. Most importantly, it looks at Todd. “You’re still clumsy.”

Todd plops himself down, chin resting on Neil’s bicep. He closes his eyes. “What d’you mean, _still_?”

Silence. Then Neil’s arm brings Todd closer to him, pressing him up against his warm chest in one motion. “Never mind.”

For once, Todd forces himself to be ignorant. He dumbs himself down, in the lack of light and in the embrace of another, so he can bask in it fully. 

* * *

“You think this’ll ever end?” Todd asks one day. One boring, slovenly day, where he’s trying and failing to finish his history notes.

“What?” Neil asks back. He’s finished his already. They’re laid out in neat piles, gutted to perfection. He’s shuffling them around for whatever reason.

Todd drops his pencil. “I dunno.” The sun is bright today. It’s nearing the end of the term. Bright flakes of snow glimmer from the ground, too smug to melt yet.

Neil has assembled his notes in their entirety when he replies back. “I wanna know.” His back is still turned, but he’s doing nothing.

“All of this,” Todd screws his eyes up in concentration. He’s chasing something that’s escaped his mind already. “This shit. Not living.”

“Not living?” Neil’s starting to turn in his chair, away from his damned notes. Success. 

Todd meets Neil’s eyes. “I wish it would end.”

Neil frowns. “I don’t know what - “

Papers catch on Todd’s hands. Stupid notes. Stupid, stupid notes, useless notes, utterly pointless notes. Who gives a fuck about the pilgrims? Why should Todd care when all he wants to do is string words together for a living? “This!” He motions around the room. A paper goes flying, as if it was lassoed by his hand and into the nether.

“Everything?” Neil says.

The room is static. It’s blurred into time’s edges, clinging onto the folds of her dress, and Todd sees every damned thing. The notes, Neil’s studiousness, his unwavering devotion to _history,_ of all things. He has a need to push down all of his desires and look everywhere else. 

Todd drops his hand because Neil’s brows are furrowed. His notes are starting to go askew. “Todd,” Neil says, and his elbow is grazing the edges of the papers, putting them on a slant, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It’s like Todd’s trapped in some alternate universe. “Aren’t you sick of it too?” he asks, regretting throwing his notes around. How stupid he sounds. 

A frustrated sigh. “Of what?”

So that’s how it’s going to be. Neil’s poised over his desk like some perfect student. Like he’s going to build his notes a shrine and make a religion out of it. 

“I’m…” It’s such a lost cause. It’s so utterly hopeless, the way Neil looks at Todd with confusion over his face. As if he’s forgotten that it’s _his_ fault Todd is this way. As if Todd’s going stir crazy and insane. As if Todd’s everything his father would hate. “Of just sitting here all the time.”

Neil frowns like the good schoolboy he is, beginning to turn around. “I mean,” he says, carelessly throwing a hand back at Todd, “we’re in school, Todd. And it’s not like we’re gonna do this forever.”

Anger, irritation, indignation. It all pours through Todd in a split second. “I know that,” he snaps back. “I’m not stupid. I know we have to do schoolwork in school, for Christ’s sake.”

A small shrug. “Good to know.”

Todd picks up his pencil, wrenching his body away from Neil. His entire body is willing him not to write, because he’s going to break the damned pencil in half. He’s going to set his notes and his desk on fire completely by accident. “Yeah.”

He always has to have the last word. Even when it doesn’t matter.

* * *

“Hey.” A hand resting on his shoulder, which juts out from the covers.

Todd blinks up at the form standing above him. “What?” he asks, trying and failing to sound awake. He was almost about to doze off. “It’s late.”

The hand turns into the side of a human, which begins to press into him for room on his bed. “Sorry.”

The apology is so sudden that it wakes Todd up. “For what?” 

Neil sidles next to him, snuggling into the covers. “For earlier.”

The explanation doesn’t do “earlier” justice. But the warm body next to him, that drapes over him and breathes out of rhythm with him, manages to make up for it.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I know you’re still upset.”

Todd shifts his body to look at Neil square in the face. It’s his first instinct to say, _yes, and it’s all your fault,_ but he doesn’t. For once in his life, he restrains himself completely. “Not anymore,” he says instead.

A finger going up and down his arm. “You’re sure about that?” 

Todd melts into the feeling. He misses, even though it’s only been a few days since Neil’s touched him. It feels like a lifetime ago. “Yes.”

The hand drifts over his arm lazily, back and forth, back and forth. It dots imaginary freckles on his skin. 

“What are you doing?” Todd breathes out. He winces directly afterwards. He wants this, but it still strikes him as sudden.

The thought of Neil’s touch being sudden to him - he pushes it down.

Neil doesn’t sense the underlying bitterness. He laughs through his nose, continuing those soft pets and making them ghost up Todd’s shoulder. “Touching you. Do you not like it?”

Todd freezes. “No,” he insists, nodding his head even though there’s no way Neil would see it. “I like it. A lot.”

Neil nuzzles his head into Todd’s shoulder. “Good.”

The ceiling’s the same, Todd notices, no matter how he looks at it. Neil curls up against him like a cat. The window clatters, the wind whooshes, and everything is still for once.

* * *

“You know,” Neil says, head arched like curved wood, “that pen to paper thing I made up?”

Todd looks up from his notes. “Pen to paper?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer. He wants to see if Neil’s kept his side of the promise. 

Neil lifts up Todd’s pen, which releases itself without much give. “Y’know,” he says, placing the pen on the paper. Then he lifts up the pen, and Todd watches as he grazes it over his lips. “Pen to paper.” He gives Todd a little poke on his chin before setting it down again.

Todd blinks once. Then he blinks again, soaking in the sight of Neil draped over his chair like a young god. “You remember?”

A small dimple appears, ever so slightly, on Neil’s face. Todd has the overwhelming urge to place his finger in it. It’s a spot meant for him, he surmises, because it looks like the perfect size. “Of course.” He leans in, face incredibly close. His breath ghosts over Todd’s ear. “Why would I ever forget?”

“Do - “ Todd looks down, past his history notes and into the ground. “Do you know what the next step is?”

Neil purses his lips playfully. He taps a finger on his chin, body framed over Todd’s like a longstanding tree. “Dunno.” Todd’s heart sinks, but then it rebounds when he sees Neil’s wry grin. “Something with lips. Wanna fill it in for me?”

Todd smiles against his will. His heart rolls and tumbles, trying to settle on an emotion that isn’t quite despair or relief. “I might get this wrong,” he says, sheepishly scratching his chin, “but lips to lips, right?”

Hands trail up his neck. Neil’s on his chair, halfway in his lap, and he feels his neck getting hotter by the second. “Correct.” The hands rest on either side of his face. “You’ve passed the test.”

Lips press into lips. Todd opens his mouth, relishing the softness of Neil’s mouth. _I haven’t done this in a while,_ he thinks blearily, feeling his way around Neil’s tongue and his bottom lip.

Neil lets go with a slight gasp. The sight is something Todd etches into his mind - the motes of dust settling around them, the sunlight drifting through the window. The ceiling is washed completely white. _It’s something different now,_ Todd thinks frantically, when his mind deigns to wander. Free of all bumps. 

It’s a nice feeling. In the back of his mind, Todd naively hopes that it’ll last forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> this time i'm writing stuff for a fandom i'm not even in anymore. i saw this draft(a year and a half old and named "lol???") and thought, huh, i really like the idea i have going on here. dead fandom be damned.
> 
> i wrote this with todd's character in mind. i wanted to take his personality and push it to its edge. i'd like to imagine that when he's completely at ease with someone, he gains some bite. 
> 
> do whatever ya want with this. i'm on tumblr @phyllomena and twitter @burningutica. thanks for reading this far, homies.


End file.
